This thesis is concerned with uncovering the cultural and social conception of health and illness in southern Italy. By using the miracles from nine key hagiographical texts, this study places the understandings of the cure-seekers, the scribes and their audience at the forefront and attempts to place the sufferers back at the centre of the history of medicine. Rather than looking at the understanding of health and illness through the prism of academic medicine, it aims to do so through the eyes of the sufferers. Through a close analysis of the miracle narratives and by listening to the illness narratives within them, this study engages directly with Roy Porter’s thought-provoking research agenda to discover the understandings of health and illness from a sufferer’s perspective and their experiences in southern Italy during the Norman period.